Adaptive lifecycle models for product design

Successful designs are those which meet the high performance expectations of the customer and which can be delivered on time. To achieve this, product design, process selection and planning must be considered in parallel. The earlier these activities are integrated, the more significant the benefits will be. This paper reports a new modelling approach for integrating process planning with early product development. The presented workflow sub-divides the early design activity into three levels – structure-based, feature-based and tolerance-enriched – according to the amount of detail required for planning to take place. Each level has a data model encapsulating the information necessary to capture all relevant product and resource data. Integrated process planning methods have been developed for each level to provide an ongoing analysis of product manufacturability.